Post Halloween movie retro movie review: Shaun of the Dead (20th anniversary)

(courtesy IMP Awards)

Got relationship troubles? Is your life feeling directionless and uninspired? Failing to realise your true potential?

We’ve all been there in one way or another, and while the solution to your relational and existential woes may seem elusive, have you perhaps considered the zombie apocalypse as the solution to what ails you?

Obviously, not one where you die and reanimate because the range of life options then are severely limited to shuffling, moaning and consuming human flesh in a brief frenzy, but how about where you discover that maybe you’re sort of, kind of a hero who finally figures out what matters to him?

If this all seems a little bit too much to figure out as a path to true happiness, love and fulfilment, then might we suggest watching Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s brilliantly clever, supremely funny and surprisingly heartfelt take on a very British zombie apolcaypse.

Currently marking 20 years since its initial release in 2004 with a shiny new trailer and poster and limited cinema releases, neatly timed, naturally enough, for Halloween, Shaun of the Dead is proof that being surrounded by the reanimated dead doesn’t have to mean the end of your life.

But life lessons aside, and yes, this gem of a film, the first entry in the Pegg and Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, definitely has them, the first thing that strikes you about the creative duo’s inventive take on the undead end of the world – well, not completely, just temporarily – is how incredibly funny it is.

If you don’t think that a zombie apocalypse isn’t a riot of fun and hilarity, then Shaun of the Dead is here to convince you otherwise.

If nothing else, one of the early scenes where Shaun (Pegg) goes to the corner shop in a hungover state to get some junk food and drinks to revive him and his loser housemate and long-time friend, Ed (Nick Frost) and completely misses the undead shuffling around him is a true piece of flawless comedic writing and performance.

Not only is it funny in and of itself, but as a symbol of how unengaged Shaun is with his life, with his dead-end job in an electronics story surrounded by slackers, and his relationship with the lovely but long-suffering Liz (Kate Ashfield) dead and buried, it is without parallel.

While you are laughing, and you laugh a lot, it strikes you that it takes a huge amount of disillusionment and sadness to be so clocked out that you miss zombies reaching and grasping for you.

In fact, it’s not until Shaun and Ed encounter two zombies in their backyard, where one gets back up after a pole bored a perfect, bloody hollow through her body, that they realise that the world they left last night in a drunken haze is not the one they’ve woken up to.

It’s a brutal awakening but it’s also, again, very funny, with the two men using anything they can, including Shaun’s record collection, to stop the zombies by taking out their heads; the funny part here is that you’d think you’d just fling them without checking what they are since being alive is better than preserving a much-treasured vinyl collection, but even as the two zombies gain on our intrepid two desperate idiots, Shaun is deliberating which records he can bear to part with (“That’s the second album I ever bought!”).

It’s at this point that Shaun of the Dead rather wonderfully becomes far more than just an apocalyptically opportunist comedy.

Aware that the world is coming necrotically apart, and that his mum Barbara (Penelope Wilton), who amusingly handles all of the zombies around her with typical British understatement (“It’s been a funny old day, hasn’t it?”), his annoying stepfather Philip (Bill Nighy) and his just-the-night-before ex Liz are in mortal danger, Shaun sets off on an heroic jaunt across to London to try and save them all.

And this is where the making, or remaking of Shaun kicks into high gear.

But this is a film by a British team, and so where an American movie would be all hero montages and inspiring moments that speak of someone getting flawlessly better and better, Shaun of the Dead does see its titular protagonist shape up as a person but, you know, not too much.

So, Shaun does step up, and some sizeable missteps aside – be kind, it’s his first zombie apocalypse okay and it’s not easy working out what to do on such a steep undead learning curve – which sees his friend and family body count climb just a little (though that’s mostly down to them for the most part), he does save the day enough to make the film feel somewhat upbeat and inspiring.

But Shaun of the Dead is mostly concerned, zombie shenanigans aside (“Maybe it’s not as bad as all that — oh, no there they are.”) with how a traumatic event like this can reshape people and either heighten what’s good them or graphically highlight what very much isn’t.

As Shaun’s ragtag bunch of fearful and friends try to get to the Winchester Pub, which is a symbol of our would-be semi-hero’s unambitious approach to life, it becomes clear that while some people are handling it well – as well as you can anyway; let’s face zombie apocalypses would test the resilience and adaptability of the best of us – some are manifestly not (right David, played by Dylan Moran, who is, to put it plainly, an obnoxious, complaining twat).

Shaun of the Dead may not necessarily be a jingoistic celebration of human potential against the odds, though it doesn’t hate that as a thematic idea, either, but in amongst all the clever, funny lines, and the pithy character studies, but it does have a lot of incisively thoughtful things to say about the human condition and how we often put a lot of pressure to do things that maybe don’t need to be done while conversely, not quite pushing ourselves hard enough.

Quite where that middle ground sweet spot lies is not really clear, although by movie’s end, it’s obvious that two people have found it, or at least one borne a hole ton of zombie-righting PTSD, but Shaun of the Dead has a lot of fun working out where it might lie and where you might up after a life-changing event like the temporary end of the world absolutely upends the inert apple cart of your life and sends back right to the start to see what happens when you start all over again.

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